


Eddies

by Izzy_Grinch



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Age Difference, Attraction, Body Worship, Devotion, Ed Kenway worship (kinda), Emotional, Feelings, M/M, Mentor/Protégé, Poor Man, Romance, Teach is so deeply in love, it's not much tho (thirteen years), looking at Edward through Teach's eyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-08 17:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14110842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izzy_Grinch/pseuds/Izzy_Grinch
Summary: Edward Kenway is a boiling undercurrent, and so Thatch is lost in its twirls and hauled along the sea bottom through the white gold of dancing grains.





	Eddies

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Водовороты](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13953927) by [Izzy_Grinch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izzy_Grinch/pseuds/Izzy_Grinch). 



> Okay, well, yes, the title is definitely a pun.
> 
> I use _Thatch_ instead of _Teach_ for it's said to be more historically correct (lol).
> 
>  _Ship frame_ is a ship's rib; they form the rib-cage of the hull.

He is as young as Thatch himself seems to have never been, for too many years have passed since his first sailing and his first pint of shitty rum. He’s raised by farm, but he belongs to the filthy backstreets and the port cities, all are alike while having so different faces, and to the dirty tavern counters, smelling of a rancid anise. He knows well what a hard labor is, although he’s preferred the scars of the knife-fights and the intense hum of the lashed ropes to the black-soiled furrows, left by a plow, and the reins, hanging low under the big head of a punch. He is much too quick on the uptake for his age, almost gifted with a street keenness of a thief; his eyes are sharp, and his fingers dive deep into the pockets of a passerby, and the pirate’s life for him is like an open bottle, just give it a sip − and you’ll never get enough. He’s not obsessed with an ocean, not yet. Whether Thatch is aboard or ashore − everywhere he dreams of the coal-black waves; the skeleton, wrapped in a silk of silty blanket next to an old anchor; the rays, flying into infinity, their slick mantles are spreading wide to the very horizon. Edward’s sleep is as empty as tight either in a cockpit with a crew, or on the rustling palm leaves, or in a littery cabin, or in the luxury of someone’s stolen manor.

Life is like a sound to him. The sounds tend to fade, and though he is loud like the surges, echoing in an empty hull, he’ll fade away too one day. Until then he sparkles from the inside − not with a flame, but with the specks of quartz, and so he can’t be quenched even when he is half seas over. He doesn’t pursue any great ideas, his deeds are presumptuous, his desires are simple and surprisingly primitive; he only seeks to slake his thirst for the legendary Maya treasures, to dip his tanned palms into the silver scales of Spanish reals, to roll the pearls and the gemstones, cut on the shores of Italy, between his fingertips. He needs neither fear nor respect, for he himself doesn’t fear or respect anyone; even the forces of nature cannot awe him, playing in the storm like a dolphin around a fisherman’s schooner.

Perhaps, he doesn’t try to catch the falling stars since they mean no value to him, and prefers to sell a book to a chapman rather than to look under its cover and thumb through the yellow pages; but how quick and agile he is, like a weasel; he climbs the shrouds with the nimble movements of a lizard, while the sun lashes him with its beams until he is the color of the sugarcane treacle; his hair high among the yards is like a bleached linen, and when he carelessly slides from a rope’s end, his eyes are brighter than the azure waters along the wild and uninhabited beach, where the ground is green of iguanas, and the ocelots, invisible on the line where sand meets jungles, are watching warily a mooring sloop. He smoothly dives from the ship to untwine the nets, and every moment of him gliding under the crystal clear surface seems to freeze for a second, like an exotic butterfly, spreading under the naturalist’s glass: a fluid body among the slowness of the speckled whale sharks; a golden arrow above the reef canvas, vivid with the shoals of jittery fish. The mermaids’ legends are truthful indeed; the Edward’s legend only starts to unfold.

He is immensely loyal, although he doesn’t know it yet. There is not much honor in his acts; he’s not concerned about the fate of slaves as well as the entire world’s destiny. An Englishman spits on his boots, a Spaniard starts swearing at the very sight of him, but for his crew he’ll cover the enemy’s deck with a deadmen carpet; like a jaguar he’ll throw himself into a fight with the redcoats, which surrounded his friend; with a blind and furious stubbornness he’ll take a risk as reckless as hopeless it is. Hope is not the one he relies on, for he only relies on himself. However, while his gaze is lying upon his foes, the Lady Fortune clings to these naked shoulders lovingly and pulls him back from the Hell, right from the Devil’s jaws, and the knotted scars he wears are the marks of her gentle fingers, and the blood stains on his cheekbones are her fervent kisses. The man of his kind doesn’t learn on his own mistakes. His face turns into a mess too often, his knuckles are usually scratched like a hawse with an anchor’s chain, and he’s always able to find a dunce one step away from the pier to strongly disagree with.

He drowns in a mug, as if he is the most screwed up sot of New-Providence. He dives with the bell for hours and then rolls over the bulwark, gulping the air hungrily and shaking himself off like a dog, and the splutters land on everyone’s shirts and sunburnt hands, while he is, obviously, greatly pleased with himself. He looks at Thatch frankly and cheekily, his pearly fangs are gleaming through his lascivious smile, and he stays for the night to arch like a tight ship frame.

And then out of a sudden he grows up, and his stubbornness, knowing no limits anymore, seethes like a geyser on the ocean bottom, and every damn thing around him starts to move and boil. He says he wants to protect Nassau. He talks about duty, talks about that noble idea to create a place for the ragtags and the outlaws, the halt and the lame; about curing the blight − either the one brought by rats or British men. It’s like he’s got his second breathe, like a tail wind has filled his garish sails, and Poseidon himself, mad and rageful, has lent him a trident to make the history. _A novice._ Thatch is sick of listening to him. The winner of this war is already known, and their attempts are no more than an agony of a killer-whale, harpooned and hooked; while being deadly in the salty depths, she turns into a pile of meat and bones when pulled from it. Thatch has already decided everything for himself, and hopefully for Edward too. But hope is foolish.

“Nassau will gnaw you from the inside. Do you smell the stink? Her womb is rotting; there is nothing left for me anymore.”

“ _I_ _am_ a part of Nassau. Here the home is, you founded it yourself, for hell’s sake!”

“She is only a speck of sand, one of a thousand. I’m leaving at dawn. The steersman’s position still can be yours.”

Edward falls back on the frayed pillows, despair and anger are clenching their teeth on him as he clenches his own, and Thatch walks away without further hesitation. He’s been accused of cowardice a hundred of times, of being pathetic and egoistic; he’s been cursed to stuck in an endless calm and never have dry powder in his guns again for the way he runs now, taking their only fleet. However, he’s not ashamed of getting old and feeling scared; he only wishes to live a little longer, for the sea is spreading in front of him so invitingly; and the seagulls are crying for the vanishing foam; and the layers of black and dark blue reflect his own soul when he looks at them. He wished the gold of a willful youth to spread on his sumptuous sheets; the weather-beaten lips to moan deliriously one name, belonging to both of them; wished to see himself in this impulsive obdurate boy.

Thatch awaits, and Edward comes. They know each other too well to argue, and they also know that neither a night of pondering nor all the nights of their damned century couldn’t change their minds, sealed with a wax of steel principles. The skies are washed by a warm breeze, the pier is creaking under their feet, the wave is snuggling to the timber piles, rolling back meekly. Someday these lands will be taken like a poor stupid whore; those who keeps holding on them will be hanged without a second thought; those who yield will be shamefully spared. Edward won’t die of a natural cause. But at this moment he is looking behind Thatch’s shoulder, narrowing his eyes at _Revenge_ , ready to weigh her anchor at any second, and then he looks at Thatch’s face, in an open manner as he always does, showing no fury, no regrets. Whatever he says today won’t make any effect, and so he remains silent, and reluctantly stays in Thatch’s embrace, and snaps as soon as the hands let go of him.

“What, you want to rob me of this too?”

He grabs the lapels of Thatch’s coat with the fists he uses to break the noses and beat the daylight out of people, and he kisses, crushes, floods Thatch’s mouth, as the seawater floods the mouth of a drowning man and stings the gums, and splits the swollen lips; or like a desperate one chokes on a bitter drink to make the blurry visions disappear, the voices shut, the colors fade. Edward is feverish and insistent. He is like the heat on an island without any scratch of a shadow; the grunting billow born from a fallen mast; the blade, crawling from a wide cuff like a poisonous snake; the bullet from a hidden barrel. And Thatch is shot.

“I’ll find you, old man, and I’ll make you change your ways.”

Edward pushes him away, grinning with a smile so confident and brazen it hurts.

“Well then... I’ll be waiting for that day to come.”


End file.
